The only people who could say that are people who've never had to hire and manage programmers for a living. It's ridiculously hard. With a technical co-founde

The only people who could say that are people who've never had to hire and manage programmers for a living. It's ridiculously hard. With a technical co-founder you have someone who is presumably very talented and extremely motivated with a hearty chunk of equity and passion for the space. Instead, these guys will be getting the worst developers, because: 1) The good developers either want to be the technical cofounder or work for a great one. 2) Startups tend to underpay developers already and employees get very little equity. 3) Non-technical people have no way of determining who is a good programmer or a bad programmer. 4) Business-people will not make a hacker culture where engineering and innovation are rewarded. 5) Unless they have many years of experience managing software projects, statistically, theirs will fail. And the worst developers are actually WORSE than nothing because they'll end up costing more than they contribute. Really, how could a tech business succeed when they don't value technical skill? It just shows extreme naivete about how programming works to think they could do it without a really talented, involved and dedicated technical person. I agree with OP: give them 6 months and see if they have anything to show for it.